Black Irish

by Stephan Talty

  She reached over and whipped her hand across his face.

  “You will NOT die before you answer my question. Why did you kill my father?”

  The eyes wandered and then came back to Abbie’s face.

  “Do you hear me? O’Halloran?”

  A long sigh escaped his lips. His eyes closed, and the right eyelid twitched.

  A siren came cutting across the wind. Abbie looked up and saw an ambulance headed straight up Tifft toward her.

  The ambulance swerved through traffic as the EMT radio blared from the front. Behind them, Abbie saw the red lights of the second emergency vehicle, carrying O’Halloran. He had died without saying another word.

  Z lay on a white cot spotted with blood. A female EMT was finishing up taping the IV to his arm, but his skin still looked corpselike in the harsh interior light of the ambulance.

  The EMT looked at the heart monitor, holding the inside of Z’s wrist. She barked a few numbers to the driver, who relayed them on the radio. The ambulance rocketed over a pothole and Abbie reached for the ceiling to steady herself.

  The EMT watched the monitor, then nodded to Abbie, turned, snapped open a drawer, took out a syringe in its packaging and began to strip it open.

  “Better talk now before I get this in him,” she said.

  Abbie slipped closer to Z, kneeling on the rubber floor.

  “You okay?”

  He nodded. Abbie laid her hand across his forehead. He was colder than he should have been.

  “Two minutes to a fat disability check,” she said.

  He smiled, then muttered something. Abbie bent down to hear.

  “Thought you shot me, you dumb bitch,” he said.

  Abbie smiled. “If I shot you, you’d be dead, dummy.”

  His eyes remained on hers, crinkled with pain. Abbie bent closer to him.

  “I know, Z, I know. I’m sorry I didn’t trust you. It was like everyone was out to get me. You know how it is.”

  He nodded. Then he turned his head and whispered something to her.

  “What?”

  She put her ear down closer.

  “We are the County.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  ABBIE LAY ON HER COUCH STARING AT THE CEILING WHILE THE VOICE OF BOY George filled her living room, “The Crying Game.” A song from 1990-something, but it sounded very eighties with its sweeping synthesizers. And, of course, Boy George’s hauntingly sad voice. “And then before / you know where you are / you’re saying goodbye.” A last moan from him and the song ended.

  Abbie blinked twice, then hit Replay on the remote. The CD player clicked softly and the song began again.

  The tenth time in a row? The twelfth? She felt like she was inside the song’s rich melancholy and she didn’t want to leave.

  Wouldn’t it amuse them if you went and lost your mind? she thought. Wouldn’t it just be the talk of Abbott Road? Absalom Kearney, hero cop, found jabbering away on Elmwood Avenue, listening obsessively to washed-up eighties sensations until she died of dehydration. They’d laugh about it at the Gaelic Club, and they’d say that the bitch had been crazy all along, and hadn’t Dennis O’Halloran, God rest his soul, been right to try and finish her off?

  It had been eight days since that night on the shore, beneath the grain silo. Eight days in which she’d been cleared of murder and gotten her badge back, along with a commendation. Days in which she’d ducked the photographers of the Buffalo News and spent most of her time holed up in her apartment. Z’s wife, Linda, had dropped off two enormous pans of lasagna, and her neighbors had knocked at her door several times, softly calling out her name. Detective Mills from Niagara Falls had left two messages, joking about the casino buffet and the date she’d promised him, but his voice sounded, well, concerned.

  She didn’t want to talk to anyone. She didn’t know what to say. Or to feel.

  The music washed over her again and she listened the whole way through, then clicked the remote control. She was getting hungry; nothing but outright starvation, however, would get her off the couch right now.

  Something was jabbing at the back of the mind, a thought wanting to be heard, as though far away someone was yelling at the top of their voice but not loudly enough to make the words clear.

  It’s over, she said to the voice. Leave me alone to fall apart in peace.

  Finally, after two more replays of “The Crying Game,” she sighed and went to the kitchen to make tea. She got out the Red Rose tea bags and then opened the dish cabinet, managing to avoid looking at her father’s teacup, which had been moved to the back corner. She took down a green enamel mug and placed a tea bag into it as the kettle began to whistle.

  Was it something Mills had said? Something in the blur of the last day that had stuck in her mind. What had he said? It was about that Outlaws case he was working. It was looking more and more like an inside job, a deadly political duel within the Outlaws themselves.

  She hoped he solved the case, but it meant nothing to her.

  But that wasn’t it. Not quite.

  The tea kettle let out a shrill whistle and then clicked off, the sound of the water bubbling seeming to fill up her small kitchen. Abbie detached the large cylinder from its base and poured the steaming water into her mug. The water slowly turned a rich, swirling brown. She took out the tea bag, stirred in sugar and cold milk, and slowly walked to the table to sit.

  The cage in the bottom of the gang’s hangout. That was it. It had lodged in her thoughts like a branch in a flooded river. But after the flood had rushed away, it lay there still, bare and unconnected to anything else. So the Outlaws were barbarians. What about it? Everyone knew that. And they’d kept a prisoner in their basement. Their women were half slaves anyway, traded and exchanged like baseball cards. There was nothing new here. Horror was everywhere.

  O’Halloran was brought across the Peace Bridge the same year she’d been adopted.

  She’d found out about the monkeys. O’Halloran had remembered the toy she carried when he’d picked her up at the City Mission with her father. John Kearney had probably scooped the picture up at the City Mission along with her things, and O’Halloran must have looked at it, his fat thumb running across the photograph, noticing the little toy. To implicate her, he’d bought a new set of monkeys and worked on them a bit, made them look old and worse for wear, then he’d dropped one at each scene. It was impressive, in a way. They’d even found a brand-new, unscuffed stash of the toys in O’Halloran’s glove compartment.

  Her questions had been answered. O’Halloran was the killer; he’d murdered Billy to stop him from telling her what he knew; it had been O’Halloran out on the ice in the red ski mask. She’d been to see Z twice in the hospital and he was getting released in two days; she was planning on visiting Billy’s grave whenever she could get out the front door; and she’d been reinstated at Buffalo PD.

  The world had repaired itself as much as possible. So why was her mind so unsettled? As much as she felt her father’s absence as a cold hole in her chest, it was more than that sorrow. Something else was needling her.

  O’Halloran had substituted one thing for another. New toy monkeys for old ones.

  She closed her eyes. Boy George was singing again. She had to get the Best of Culture Club CD. She wanted to hear more of that voice …

  The thought was back. She saw a face, or half of one, a face lit by lightning. She closed her eyes and slowly rubbed her temples with both index fingers.

  No, Absalom. Let it go.

  She couldn’t.

  Abbie picked up her cell phone and dialed Mills’s number. She’d heard the warmth in his messages, and she’d liked it. But she hadn’t yet called him back.

  “It’s Kearney,” she said when he answered.

  “Hey,” he said dully. Then his voice perked up. “Oh, hey. Kearney, how the hell are you? Everything okay? I mean …”

  “I’m not really sure. Zangara is getting better.”

  “What about you?”
/>
  “I’m … I don’t know. It’s going to take time.”

  “I know. I’m not going to say ‘If there’s anything I can do,’ because you already know that.”

  “Yes, I do. Thank you.”

  Pause. “So you’re obviously calling me up to make that date …”

  She smiled.

  “The buffet is on tonight,” he continued. “And we get five dollars in chips if we go before ten. Is that an irresistible deal or what?”

  Say yes, she thought. Put on that green dress you like and go up and meet the man and forget about all of the things you’ve seen. Let it go.

  “You’re on. But I need a favor first.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Can you check if you have an unsolved murder from 1982, probably late April, early May.”

  Mills sighed. “Jesus Christ, Kearney. Do you ever take a day off?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “We have all the open cases collated in a file. It’s on my laptop. Hold on.”

  He put down the phone.

  Say no, she thought. Say that 1982 was a perfect year for closed cases at the Niagara Falls PD. Say you’ll meet me at the casino doors and we’ll dance to the corny music.

  “You there?”

  “Yes,” she said faintly.

  “Joseph Padarski, thirty-two.”

  Silence.

  Then she said, “Tell me he wasn’t a biker.”

  “Um, yeah, he was. Why?”

  Abbie closed her eyes. “An Outlaw, right?”

  “Yep. I’m looking at his picture. Nasty dude. Wanna guess his weight?”

  “Last question. The basement of the Outlaws house. Was it heated?”

  Mills’s voice sounded dead. “They don’t heat any basements up here, Kearney. Too damn expensive.”

  Silence.

  “Kearney? What is this all about?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  AS SHE DROVE TO THE EAST SIDE, THE SNOW CAME DOWN IN SHEETS. A nasty night, a night to stay in and read a good book. The only stores open were the liquor stores, which never closed, and a few corner delicatessens selling the last of their bread and milk before the storm covered the city.

  She parked the Saab in front of the Reverend’s building and got out.

  That little girl, Rashida, was sitting on the stoop in her braids and an oversize jacket.

  “Hi, Detective Kearney.”

  “Hi, Rashida. Is the Reverend around?”

  “Yeah. I saw him inside with that smelly man from down the block.”

  “Thanks.”

  She entered the hallway, lit by a single bulb hanging from a dark wire. She rang the Reverend’s bell. The sound of voices from inside. Men’s voices. The door opened and the Reverend looked at her in surprise.

  “Absalom! You’re back already?”

  “Can I talk to you?”

  She stood there, willing herself to leave before it was too late.

  “Let me finish up here. I’m about to get this young man into a city program, just what he needs. Will you stay out here while I say a prayer with him?”

  She nodded.

  He looked at her closely, then pursed his lips and shut the door.

  Three minutes later, a young man with a shaved head, dressed in an army fatigue jacket and jeans, his eyes wide with excitement, came out, nodded once to himself, and shut the door with a bang.

  “Evenin’,” he said.

  “Good luck,” she said.

  “Don’t need luck,” he said. “I’ve got the Lord with me now.”

  The door opened again. Abbie slipped by the Reverend.

  “Glad you came by.” The Reverend swept around her, head down, lost in his thoughts, and sat in his desk chair. “I wanted to ask you about giving a talk to some fifth-graders over at Jefferson Elementary. I’m running out of role models to bring ’em over there, and if I brought the famous Absalom Kearney, they’d be floating on air.”

  She looked at him.

  “I need to talk to you about something, Reverend.”

  His eyes were liquid in the low light of the desk lamp. His bald pate caught some of the amber glow from behind.

  “Sure. Sit, sit.”

  She sat on the hard wooden chair and looked at him. She felt she barely had the energy to move her lips.

  “How did my father have your number?”

  He seemed to be frozen in mid-gesture, looking at her, frown lines deep on his forehead.

  “What now?” he said, his body very still. “How’d your father—”

  “He called you up and told me to meet him at Tifft. You passed on the message. How did he have your number?”

  The Reverend shook his head. “He must have looked me up. I’m in—”

  “I checked his cell phone records; the bill arrived yesterday. He didn’t. He dialed your number directly.”

  “Maybe he had it written—”

  He realized the mistake then, and he smiled.

  “He had it because you knew each other. Your phone number hasn’t changed in thirty years, I’ll bet.”

  “The Lord kept me where I was needed.”

  “Your phone number hasn’t changed, has it?”

  “No, Absalom, it hasn’t.”

  “Who did he trade O’Halloran for?”

  His gaze left her eyes and fell to the armchair. He seemed to be on the verge of speaking, and then he stopped and looked at her.

  “Absalom, what are you talking—”

  She shook her head. I will not cry, she told herself.

  “No,” she said. “You tell me now. A biker was killed in Niagara Falls in 1982, the same year I was adopted by my father. The same year that O’Halloran was brought across the border. I think O’Halloran killed that biker, and the Clan traded someone to get him back. Who did my father trade for O’Halloran?”

  The Reverend’s eyes were deep, flickering with the amber light.

  “Why, you.”

  Abbie shook her head again.

  “Who did he give the Outlaws? Who did you give?”

  The Reverend exhaled loudly. He began to knit one hand into the other, the powerful hands kneading the flesh over and over.

  “You could never understand, Absalom, as bad as you want to. You’ll never understand it.”

  “The name, Reverend.”

  He dropped his hands, rubbing the lines of his forehead, before looking up at her. She had never seem him so depleted, so old looking.

  “His name was Michael.”

  “Michael who?”

  “Michael Minton. Your brother.”

  Her eyes closed and she rocked forward once in the chair. She felt if she didn’t move, she would explode.

  “Michael. Like the archangel Michael. My mother opened the Bible for that name, too, like she did for mine?”

  He nodded. “I didn’t know her then. But she came to me for help with Michael, when he was starting down his path.”

  “My brother. My only brother.” Her voice was shaking.

  He studied his hands.

  “By the time you were born, you wouldn’t have wanted to know Michael. He was twelve years older than you and headed to hell by the fast road—”

  “He was only fourteen years old when you sent him away? Fourteen?” Her hand was pressed to her mouth.

  She stared at the Reverend, waiting for his objection, but instead he looked pleadingly at her.

  “Do you know how beautiful a child you were, Absalom? How bright, even at two years old? I told your mother I’d never met a child with such intelligence in her eyes. Never in my life.”

  “What happened to my brother?”

  “You had more promise at two years old than most of those City Mission kids have at twenty-five. I said so then and I was right. I wanted one child to have a chance. Can you understand that?”

  He stood up and turned his back to her, staring at the books on the shelf as he spoke.

  “When Michael was about fourteen, things started happen
ing in the neighborhood. First we started finding cats left in alleyways. Without their heads. I recall about four of them.”

  He turned to look at her.

  “They’d been tortured. Their fur burned off by a cigarette lighter while they were alive.”

  Abbie’s eyes narrowed. “And you traced them to Michael?”

  “The cats turned up dead near where he stayed.”

  “That’s it? No one ever saw him abusing the cats?”

  “No, Absalom. But there was more. The fires.”

  “What fires?”

  “We had an arsonist loose around here in ’81, ’82. Abandoned buildings mostly, plenty of them to use as kindling wood. But some occupied ones, too. The person would put some old newspapers and cardboard boxes and some lighter fluid in the basement and light ’em up. Two of the places where Michael had been staying were burnt out.”

  “You have no proof he did it. And, yes, fire-starting and torture of small animals are two early traits shared by serial killers. You knew that, didn’t you?”

  “I learned that.”

  “But they could also be the signs of abuse. Disturbed children do the same things. He wasn’t a serial killer at fourteen, Reverend.”

  “Maybe not. But then there were the robberies.”

  “What robberies?”

  “Bad ones, push-in robberies, you know. His victims were terrified, Absalom.”

  He turned.

  “They said the young man had this look in his eyes.”

  “A look in his eyes. Because he wore a ski mask, didn’t he?”

  “How did you know that?”

  Abbie said nothing, only closed her eyes.

  “They told me about how he was almost disappointed to find their little stashes of money,” the Reverend continued, “or a bit of jewelry. Something told them that he’d come there to kill, to hurt them, and robbing was just an excuse. And his voice sounded like your brother’s.”

  Abbie shot out of her chair. “This neighborhood has more ex-cons that you can throw a stick at, arsonists, robbers. Half the men on this block probably have a record. But you pinned it all on Michael.”

  “I had to protect my community.”

  “And what if it was him? He was desperate for money, his mother was a heroin addict. He was lonely and neglected. These are the signs of a boy crying out for help, not a psychotic killer.”